1.2.7-Columbina
Brick!Club 1.2.7 and 1.2.8 Another twofer, I’m sorry. I was putting off doing 1.2.7, because my thoughts have been being all swirly and I couldn’t get them pinned down. I still haven’t really, but I don’t want to get any further behind. 1.2.7 The Interior of Despair First of all, it’s kind of interesting to catalogue the activities Valjean got up to in Toulon, besides working and suffering major dissociative disorder. We learnt last chapter that he plotted escapes with the other prisoners, or at least that they helped him, so he must have developed some measure of… probably not friendship, but he wasn’t actively disliked, at least. He slowly and methodically worked through the reasons behind his current position, showing some pretty decent intelligence. He learnt to read, at forty, which cannot be easy. He spent his spare time climbing up to the roof and what, just chilling there? While the guards stood at the bottom yelling at him to come down please? Maybe that’s where he did all his thinking. The other thing is that this Valjean is so different to the one we saw in Digne in the early evening. He’s come out of Toulon with “the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which manifests itself by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to some living being, no matter whom“ but he doesn’t put up a fight against any of the people who kick him out, and he ‘gently’ responds to the second innkeeper when he’s all “Oh, you know who I am? Right, I’ll get my bag then, sorry to have bothered you.” The only person he’s really mean to is the Marquise, and he’s so fed up by that point I can hardly blame him. Then we get him in the Bishop’s house with his puppyish tail-wagging. Where is this monstrous hate-filled dangerous man? Sarah1281 noted that his plan to “take society to task” is pretty vague and I agree with her that I doubt even Valjean really knew what he was going to do. So I wonder if he just forgot all that as soon as someone showed him kindness? I know we’ve just had a full chapter on how deep this hatred had penetrated, but… I think this is the reason for his sudden change in ‘Tranquility’ then. He suddenly remembers that he was going to take his revenge on society, he suddenly realises that this man is part of, well, The Man. Maybe he even realises, though perhaps not in so many words, that this man who has been so kind is meant to be the shepherd of the Digne flock, the same people who turned him away and let their kids throw rocks at him, and suspects him of a terrible hypocrisy. 1.2.8 Billows and Shadows In which Hugo just nails it. This whole chapter is so fantastic, so absolutely suffocating to read, it’s so painful. I really can’t add any more.